The Lyre Dancers

by Mandy Haggith

  ‘Thank you.’ She was crying again.

  Donnag returned to the blaze.

  Rian turned and saw Manigan and Fin standing talking with Soyea, who was gesturing at the crowd and the kiln. There was so much more assurance about this young woman than the Soyea she was familiar with. Her little girl was grown. She felt something inside herself falling open.

  Then Manigan was coming towards her and she let herself sink into his presence as he shuffled her along the bench, squeezing her up to Buia, holding her together while she did what she needed to do. Out of the corner of her eye she could see her daughter and Fin leaning into each other, talking, his hand on her forearm, and then standing, shoulder to shoulder, both tall, both strangers, yet somehow together, watching everything.

  Rian took a deep breath. ‘Buia. Do you know who my mother is?’

  She wasn’t sure if Buia had heard her. She gave no reaction, and just continued to stare into the blaze, her eyes not shifting even when Donnag said ‘excuse me’ and passed between them and the kiln with another bundle of wood to feed the hungry fire. The wall of heat pushed them back on their seats and Rian wondered if they could move the bench away.

  With a jerk, Buia clenched her hand into Rian’s thigh and turned to her. ‘She is a wicked girl. I don’t like her. Is she still alive?’

  Rian looked into her eyes. They were gleaming with tears and fire. ‘I don’t know, Buia. I don’t know who she is. I never knew.’

  ‘She’s a wicked girl, Cuilc. Thin and spoilt. I don’t like her.’ She had the voice of a child.

  ‘Did you say Cuilc? Is that her name?’ Rian didn’t so much as blink.

  ‘Cuilc. I don’t like her. She said I should feel sorry for her because she has to marry ugly Luachair instead of lovely Farspag, but that’s no reason to drown a baby, is it?’ She looked past Rian to Manigan, appealing to him. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Manigan.’ He spoke gently, but he too had stiffened at the name.

  ‘You’re the Mutterer.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She gazed intently into his face. ‘I like you.’

  Between them, Rian had started to tremble.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ Manigan said. ‘That her mother is Cuilc? Rian didn’t drown.’

  ‘Mother Danu saved her. Pulled her from the sea. She’s our little foster girl, Rian. I’m good, but her mother is wicked. It was a secret. I didn’t tell anyone as long as Mother Danu was here, but now she’s gone.’

  ‘You told Fin,’ Rian said.

  She frowned. ‘I never. I told him I knew her. I told him she tried to drown you. But I didn’t tell him who she was. I never told anyone until I told Soyea. And now you. Danuta has gone west and I can’t hold it in anymore.’

  Rian felt Manigan’s grip harden around her shoulders. She looked up into his face and saw reflected there a horror equal to her own. ‘This means Eadha is my brother, so Rona…’

  ‘Half-brother, anyway,’ said Manigan. ‘But it’s still…’

  Rian finished the sentence he seemed unable to. ‘…sacrilege. Didn’t I say there was something not right about that marriage?’ She lifted her hand from Manigan’s thigh. ‘We have to leave tomorrow.’

  Buia twisted on the bench and waved at Soyea, who waved back. ‘Mother Danu’s gone. Soyea can look after us now.’

  SOYEA

  STONE

  Later, much later, when the kiln has been fired and everyone else has gone to bed, and the sky is starting to lighten again, I find myself sitting with Fin against the wall of the broch facing the sea. We seem to gravitate together. I don’t feel tired and he is full of stories. His monkey is sitting on one of his feet, grooming itself.

  We have been talking about Cuilc, Rona and Eadha, the realisation that my sister is married to my uncle, and what we think about it. Mother is hysterical, Manigan is furious, and I don’t know enough to be sure how to respond but it sounds serious. I’m trying to remember if beautiful Eadha looks anything like mother and I’ve just hit upon the possible complication that, as Manigan is also from the Winged Isle, maybe he and Mother are related as well.

  Suddenly Fin says, ‘Can I give you something to look after? To keep safe. Somewhere not obvious.’

  ‘What is it?’

  He pushes the monkey aside and pulls a tough hemp bag out from among some boulders below the broch. It looks heavy. He opens it enough for me to see it contains Manigan’s stone head, the one Ussa stole, the one Mother calls The Death Stone.

  I shudder. It’s years since I’ve seen it.

  ‘I don’t want it.’ It is out of my mouth before I think.

  ‘I know.’ He closes the bag and sits back down. ‘I don’t know what to do with it.’

  ‘How on earth did you get hold of it?’

  ‘I bought it. It seemed like a suitably crazy thing to do at the time.’

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘Ussa’s father.’

  I’m flabbergasted.

  ‘I don’t want to have to keep lugging it around. I thought about chucking it in the sea, but I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’

  I don’t know what to say.

  He’s looking down at his monkey, scratching it between the ears. ‘To be honest, I’d heard that having the head was what made Manigan a great hunter. So I wanted it.’

  ‘So you want to be a hunter too?’

  ‘I don’t know. I want to sail. He’s a bit of a hero.’

  I snort. Someone else in thrall to Manigan. That’s all I need.

  ‘So you should carry the stone.’

  He shakes his head. ‘It gives me dreams.’

  ‘Bad dreams?’

  He nods slowly.

  I shiver. I don’t like this. I don’t want the stone. And I’m thinking of how scared he must be of it.

  ‘You think I’m a coward, don’t you?’ He doesn’t wait for me to answer. ‘I know it’s dangerous. It’s called the Death Stone. You can ask it questions and it will answer, so they also call it the Stone of Telling, but each answer costs a life. It’s a ghastly thing. I just have a hunch you might be able to look after it. There’s a prophecy…’

  ‘What prophecy?’

  ‘There’s stuff I’ve been told by Manigan that I can’t repeat. I lose track of what’s secret and what’s not. But there’s something about the way you avoided that bear. You just seemed to sidestep the danger. Faced it, without being scared, and did the right thing.’

  I look at him and he meets my gaze. He has pleading in his eyes.

  Buia is here. I never heard her approaching.

  She points to the bag. ‘That’s the Death Stone.’

  He nods at her.

  ‘It smells.’ She wrinkles up her nose. ‘Hide it. That place is no good.’ She is pointing to where it was. ‘This is better.’ She shuffles over to the corner of the pig pen and sticks her hand under the wall. ‘Here.’ She beckons to me.

  ‘I don’t want it.’

  ‘Better hide it,’ Buia says. ‘This is a good hiding place.’

  I stand up. As I pass him, he has a look on his face of pure desperation that I can’t bear. He hands me the bag. I take it and stuff it in the hole.

  Buia rubs one finger across her lips and closes her eyes, then opens them again and makes a funny pursed expression with her mouth. She twirls her fingers in a gesture of goodbye and wanders away.

  The next day, before the kiln has cooled, Bradan sails off with them all in their furies and tempers and everything here goes quiet again. There is nobody here but Buia and I to admire the beautiful pots Donnag has made to honour Danuta. We drink a little mead in her memory.

  RONA

  RUINS

  My life is in ruins. It is a cataclysm. It is all Mother’s doing.

  Cuilc is not here and now I wish we had not let her go. She wouldn’t allow this to happen. She’ll deny the claim Mother is making, I’m sure of it. It cannot be true.

  She says she has come to save me, but in fact she’s murdering me.
I shall die without him.

  I do not believe what she tells me. It is impossible.

  I refuse to believe it.

  She and Eadha are so unlike they cannot be related at all, let alone sister and brother. He is dark and strong and warm and beautiful, while she is pale and thin and cold. He is like a beautiful stag and she is like a stone.

  She has convinced Father as well. She says we have committed sacrilege, that to sleep with my mother’s brother is as bad as sleeping with my own brother, which must be punished by death or banishment.

  We were in bed when they arrived. I must relish the memory of it. We were perfectly at peace, alone in the building together for the first time in months, taking advantage of an unheard-of indulgence, privacy in the daytime, before our evening dance practice. We had made love and were lying together, murmuring, purring like kittens, when we heard shouting and Mother screeching. Today she was like a hawk on a leash, her voice, shrill and jagged, full of outrage and disgust. And father was like a thundercloud. He pulled me away from Eadha and hugged me, but it was a wrestler’s hold. He said they have come to rescue me, but I don’t want to be rescued from Eadha. He made it sound like we are doomed. He made it sound like a heavy door slamming shut.

  And then I was locked away in here, in the dark and I don’t know what they have done to Eadha. Oh my heart, what will they do to him?

  They say it doesn’t matter that we didn’t know. It makes no difference, they say, the spirits know everything. They say our sex is an abomination. They call our desire for each other unnatural, a perversion. How can this be? How can something so beautiful be anything other than the wish of the gods?

  I don’t believe it.

  I cannot believe it.

  It is damp in here and cold. It smells disgusting. If I go to sleep the rats will chew my face.

  I am alone here.

  The darkness terrifies me.

  I am losing my mind.

  When he touches me, it is like the sun. I become honey. He, the bee, stings me and it is heaven.

  I do not care if he is blood kin. He was never family to us before. He was a stranger when we met. We were both adults. There was nothing wrong in what we did. We fell in love as two people meeting randomly and finding ourselves drawn together. It is completely pure. There’s no corruption, no perversion. It is not like that. It has never been like that. It is pure.

  But what if the force of our love is due to kinship? I have felt it as unique, as a fire that burns more brightly than any that has burned before. Can that be because he is my uncle? Is it a fire of damnation?

  I do not care. Let me be damned. I need him.

  I must escape.

  I hunt around in the dark. It’s the grain cellar and there is no way out except through the door, but at some point they must feed me. I shall find a way to make them set me free. I find a sack to nestle in on and think. I curl myself up into a ball and cry until my desperation gives way to fury. I don’t believe it. Mother is imagining it. She is mad.

  I must get out of here or I too will go mad. I must not sleep. Rats will chew. Listen to them scuttling.

  I pace about in the dark. I can take four steps in each direction. Almost every step I feel a slug under my foot. The walls are slimy and foul and there are cobwebs everywhere. They stick to me. There are probably spiders in my hair, weaving their webs, trying to choke me.

  I listen. Scratching. Rats again. I can’t bear it, but I have to.

  I am thirsty. I will not die in this hole.

  Eadha. Where are you? Why was it wrong? It was so beautiful.

  Surely the spirits cannot limit us with these petty rules. Mother’s half-brother, a stranger, my lover, my god, my soul. I pray. The bull, the stag, the drake, the pack leader, they all take whichever female they desire. Why not Eadha the Chieftain, the most beautiful?

  My skin remembers you, my lover.

  My fingers remember you.

  My lips remember you.

  ESCAPE

  Father brings me food in the end. I am ready and seize my chance. I have to be clever and get it right first time. I weep audibly to make him pause, listen to me, come in a bit closer to hear. He takes a step in and I can see the light beyond him. As he bends to put the food down, I make my voice soft and full of sorrow. ‘Papa, is that you? I’m thirsty.’ He’s my father. He loves me. I’ve always been his favourite.

  He is peering into the darkness and I rush past him, pushing him against the door. It works. As I pass him I smell bread. I am nearly faint with hunger but only one thing matters, and that is to get out. I run up the steps, through the next door, on and out. And luck is with me. No one stops me. As I charge through the main room to the outside door they reach out but I am too fast. I’m slippery as a salmon and the silver river of fortune is flowing with me.

  Eadha and I know lots of good hiding places. Once I’m out of the broch it’s easy. I didn’t know what time it was in the souterrain, but it couldn’t be better: dusk, the easiest time to find a shadow to be secret in.

  I slip away, running like a weasel and vanish through a crack in a dyke.

  The night will be short. I press on along the coast, away, away. Eventually I pause and try to decide where to aim for. Where will Eadha go? Where will he be waiting for me? I wonder whether he has already managed to get away. I hope so. Once we’re together we can hide forever, after all, he has known this place since childhood.

  At least I have water now. There is always water. And at first light in the woods, I will find leaves and roots and I will live. It is not possible to starve at this time of year. I hide in among boulders where nobody will find me.

  At first light I creep out in the dimness and carry on along the shore. I find pignuts, plenty of leaves, enough to fill my stomach. I must keep moving. I have made up my mind what I need to do.

  Before sunrise I am along at the nousts where I take the smallest coracle with the lightest paddle and heave it down to the shore. The tide is rising but I cannot wait for it to help me. Fortune smiles on me again: an offshore breeze. I set my back to it and skull. I think about just going across the loch to Brigid’s Cave, but that’s exactly where they will expect me to go, so I’m being cleverer than that.

  My body was not made for this amount of skulling, but I must keep going. I must get over the horizon before they wake, before they find out where I am going. If Father sees me, he will sail me down in minutes and I will stand no chance. I put my back into the paddle.

  By the time it is fully light, the shore is far off but I am tiring. Waves buffet me. My hands bleed where the blisters from paddling have burst. The salt stings and I am thirsty again. I do not know if I can make it. But I don’t think they are following me. I see no sails when the waves lift me.

  Eventually I can skull no more.

  Perhaps it would have been better to rot in that hole. No! Anything but that. Eadha, where are you? What am I doing out here?

  As the chop gets up, I begin to fear I will die here at sea but then I pull myself together and think. The wind is blowing where want to go. It wants to help me. I stand the paddle up as a kind of mast and let my shawl act as a sail. If only I could find a way to fix the mast in place without having to hold it. I rip strips of cloth from my dress to use as a lashing for the mast and bandages for my hands.

  I never knew Father had taught me so much about sailing until today. The boat is gaining on the island. I will be sunburned and if I do not get a drink soon, I will be driven to drinking seawater. My head is pounding, the breeze is chilly and the glittering sea is blinding but I am on a bearing for Rum and it is getting closer. I cannot miss it now, even if I end up on a rocky shore. At least I am not going to die out here.

  The cloth is weak and even with the lashings I have to cling to the paddle to keep it upright. It is hard work trying to keep the shawl functioning as a sail, but I am getting there. I may even reach the inlet where they land their boats. I remember it now and I can see the opening, trees growi
ng in the shelter of the bay.

  My shawl-sail begins to flop. I scream at the wind, ‘Don’t die on me now, wind, please. Please don’t fade out on me here. Just a little further!’

  The breeze lapses completely and I sit drifting, begging the wind spirits. A skuar plumps down on the glassy water beside the coracle and watches me, its beak like a sickle.

  ‘You can’t eat me,’ I tell it. ‘I’m not going to die just yet.’

  I am about to jump out and swim for it when a ruffle comes across the water towards me.

  My sail bags as the breeze lifts. It fills! The boat moves. The trickle under the hull is like sacred music.

  Life was ebbing and now it is flowing again. I will survive!

  I almost don’t believe it when I reach the shore. With the last of my strength I drag the coracle up above the seaweed. Crawling, I follow the sound of water and there’s a little stream, trickling down towards the sea. It’s all I need. I hurl myself down and slurp at it like a dog, weeping with relief. And then I hear something, a cough. I turn around and see a man and realise I am naked. But exhaustion overcomes my shame. It’s Aonghas. He says kind words. I can’t get to my feet, but he picks me up and carries me back to his home.

  RUM

  I am weak as a newborn calf, unable to get up, my legs wobbly, my hands like lobster claws. I am alive, though, and Cuilc is here. As soon as I see her I try to tell her what has happened but she hushes me and will not listen. She must think I am raving, crazy. But I have not lost my mind.

  I sleep. I don’t know how long for. When I wake a scrawny woman introduces herself as Onni and feeds me porridge. She tries to make me eat meat, but I hate it. Deer flesh. They say it will make me strong so I have a little, but porridge is better. I will get strong enough on porridge. I keep asking to see Cuilc and when she comes I tell her we have to rescue Eadha but she acts as if she doesn’t trust me. Am I a prisoner here as well? She says I must rest, but Eadha’s life is in danger. I must get back to the Winged Isle, try to rescue him. She says if I am so keen to get back why did I run away?